So, Borders have finally gone under, here as well as in the US. Taking Angus and Robertson with them, and Whitcoulls in New Zealand. I am actually sorry to see them go, even though they haven’t been the stores they used to be for a long time.
A lot of people in publishing and bookselling hated Borders for the obvious reason. They came stomping into a market, often crushing independent bookstores under foot, and applying a mass production sensibility to something which had once been a bit of a cottage industry.
All true. And yet I didn’t mind Borders because, in the old days at least, they carried some amazing backlist. In the early days of that chain it was possible to wander in off the street and find whatever you wanted somewhere along the miles of shelving they maintained. They may have only kept two or three copies of backlist titles, but at least they kept them. Along with thousands of obscure titles you weren’t going to find in other chains, or at the independents, which simply could not hold that much stock.
I’m not sure when this situation changed, but I was aware during my last book tour–what, eighteen months ago?–that everything had changed. I’ve done enough touring over the years that I’m allowed out on my own without a publicist these days. A lot of the grunt work of book touring, for instance ringing up bookstores and arranging visits, I would do for myself.
I remember very clearly being told, on the quiet, at the start of my last tour not to bother wasting my time visiting Borders. Some of them, franchises I think, were OK. But the chain as a whole run by Redgroup was considered to be toxic. Poor old Angus and Robertson, also caught up with the same venture capital smartarses was even worse.
I’m not sure whether you’ve been into an A&R store the last couple of years. Jesus, talk about depressing. They became giant dump bins for failed remainder copies imported directly from the US. Shit books by no-name authors, poorly printed on cheap stock.
So, what does this all mean?
Well, people will still buy books. It may hasten the acceleration towards electronic books which is already underway. It may shore up the position of the surviving chains, particularly well-run operations like Dymocks. What I would like to think might happen is something I’ve been predicting for a while. That we start to see something of a renaissance in the independent bookshop sector.
I did an interview with a journalist yesterday who was preparing a story for the Courier Mail, where we discussed this very issue. He specifically wanted to know about e-books, but we drifted onto the topic of the publishing industry in general. I told him what I’ve been telling people for nearly 2 years now.
Electronic book publishing is going to destroy the major chains. The sort of high volume disposable fiction which is their stock in trade, will migrate almost entirely into electronic form over the next 10 years. Their other income streams, recorded music and video are already drying up. It doesn’t mean the end of the printed book. It just means printed books will be a much smaller segment of the market, and eventually much more of an elite item purchase. You can expect to pay a lot more for your paper books in future, but you can expect to buy only certain types of books in paper format because of that.
This isn’t going to happen overnight, or even in the next two or three years. But it is going to happen over the next decade. At the end of that process I would expect to see most of the chains gone, but many of our much loved independent bookstores will still with us, doing what they do very well now. Providing a bespoke service, with a lot of hand selling of small print run high value books as part of a complete retail experience. What the fuck does that mean?
It doesn’t mean sticking Gloria Jeans in the middle of your bookshop hoping that people will buy shitty books along with the shitty coffee. But it might mean something like my local bookstore, which is also a restaurant and café, and a really lovely place just hang out for a couple of hours. It’s deeply embedded in the local community and appreciated not just for the books it sells, but the amenity brings to the neighborhood.
I can’t think of a single Borders chain store about which you could say that.
If you look at the UK and the US, public libraries are being closed and amalgamated like a MoFo as it turns out that many of them are very poorly utilized by the wider ratepayer community.
The other real killer is the AUD. I picked up a Jaspar Fforde yesteday for $22.99 at Dymocks. Cost for the same book (free shipping) amazon.co.uk = 4.29 quid = 6.8 AUD.
So 7 bucks Australian for amazon.co.uk versus $23 from Dymocks at the current exchange rate
THAT is why local booksellers are fucked.
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Speaking of libraries: Quoting from a recent article in the courier mail:
‘About $750,000 worth of emerging artist grants have been cancelled and council’s library book budget slashed by $928,000.’
I thought the council library budget slash was a bit higher than this, if I remember right I think they’re reducing they’re budget by 1/3, the guy I heard talking on the radio said that they’d upped the budget by a third last year but after the floods had decided to nix that.
Given that other local councils in Qld & other disaster areas are likely to make similar budget cuts, I can’t imagine this will be a good thing for the book industry.
I too used to love going into Borders and that was our standard meeting place in town. I knew it was in trouble when I took the elevator to the second level, blinked, and wondered for a moment if I’d teleported into spotlight or lincraft. My reaction to the display of all that junk was to turn on my heel and run away, very, very fast, fearing that worse awaited me on the third floor.
Yes well, if they’re fucked, they’re fucked; not a whole lot we can do about it,unless we WANT to.Wind back Amazon, and all online sales, stop students relying on quick internet searches to do their work… Not many poeople answer that description. Unfortunately. Not much point even analysing what we’re not trying to halt.
Plan B/.
Just watch it all collapse and forget about it.
Seems to be the default plan.
Watching Nightline last night on this very subject they interviewed the owner of the little independant book shop at Bondi Beach that I patronise…they too will be closing up shop regrettably. Lower sales would be part of the issue there, as would the extortionate rents charged at Bondi Beach. Nonetheless this did sadden me. Further, it’s lovely to be able to take my little bloke into a book shop and let him loose in the kid’s book section. Inevitably we will walk out with a few books – in part because my wife and I encourage his reading, and also my wife can be a huge shopaholic! But she started her working life as a librarian and as such is quite addicted to the printed book. E-readers may be all well and good, but particulalry when it comes to richly illustrated kids or reference books, I doubt they can take their place.
So where to shop for books now, as a not-cool-enough suburbanite the indie shops are out. Say what you want about a sense of community at those shops it is most definitely a closed community. The big retailers are useless and I really hate online shopping for books. Its just not the same as the real deal. I like finding something on the shelves which I would never have thought to look for. Guess its now a choice between paying extra for poor service at the indies or going online.
I agree with Ken Burgin. http://www.booko.com.au is the best online bookshop, because it’s not an online bookshop at all, just a portal. You enter a book name or ISBN, and it compares the prices of all the online bookshops in the world, including shipping cost to Australia. It includes overseas online stores like BookDepository, Amazon.com, BetterWorldBooks etc, as well as the Australian stores like Dymocks & Collins. I regularly save 60% on my obscure computer books.
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So I just looked in my wallet and found a Borders Gift Voucher ($50) that I got for Xmas. I then looked online and found that Borders are honouring gift vouchers but are apparently demanding that the customer spend at least the same amount as the voucher…on top of the voucher. I shall test this out tomorrow. If you hear reports of a madman going ‘a bit silly’ at the Borders at Garden City, assume it is me. It’ll take 15 coppers to bring me down…
I spent my chrissy voucher on Monday, so was lucky. Unfortunately this means that I’ll have to come up with a new “no-effort” kris kringle present for my family to get me as the Borders Voucher was a reliable fallback.
seven – agree with you about up yours indie bookshops – full of braying botoxed bookwankers
Lets have a LEVY I SAY!
The whole bookstore experience is a lot like another thing I’d bet most of us used to do-go to the record store. I know-you can order anything you want on iTunes. But I used to enjoy going to Musicland (don’t know the Oz equivalent but you all will) and looking through the stacks of LPs and racks of cassettes. There are still a few independent music stores floating around, that have discs from local bands you can’t get anywhere else, staffed by people who know their stuff. We might want to patronize their places after hitting the bookstores.
Where in the past we may have sought the expertise of wisened independant retailers, the “democratisation” of taste and expertise through the internet and social networking reduces the need for such advice. Consider that rather than seeking the advice of such a person, you can instead use social networking to become aware of people and works. This site is an example. Would you follow up on a recommendation from JB or another burger that you respect if they said “this book/movie/TV show is amazing”. I am far more likely to try something recommended by someone I respect on Twitter or a blog than because a store owner made the recommendation. Heck the good store owners probably already have social media oytlets for their recommendations!
Bondi… you are not suggesting the awesome G&A are closing?
Seven and Robbie, I just read your thoughts on indie book places and I was thinking about it, trying to eb abit dispassionate given my own attachment. Yeah, I do see where you’re coming from, you get an overall impression and that is how you form a decison about where to consume stuff. And w/o knowing what your indie places are like, of course, there’s usually some very good stories (from the people working there)in such places, from the people behind the counter/. Well, that’s my experience. One of the guys in my fave indie bookshop was a graphic artist originally and what he knew about book cover art was phenomenal. They also knew exactly who I meant when I needed something not on the best seller or common reads list and where to source it. I haven’t had that in Borders because of the time pressures –rather than the people. The students working in Borders are really lovely, so it’s not them, in fact there’s something about bookshops in general that seesm to attract conscientious staff. Just the system is different in a small, one- off place. It’s not automatically full of wankers, just people who are sick of an impersonal mass market way of doing business.
..anyhow, I just heard an interview with someone who said Borders could be back up and running again in 6 months time if they are able to resolve their problems.
He probably means Zabriskie Booksellers of Bondi.
It has just been confirmed. If you want to redeem a voucher at Borders you need to spend the amount on the voucher first. This makes me a little angry. I hope I don’t have to do the same with the “Free Sexual Disease Check Up” voucher I have from my local clinic.
Re the vouchers, I had a $70 one for A&R or Borders and spent it on line last night. Total price was $77 and I had an email this morning confirming one book had been posted, so I’m guessing it worked as normal. That was on the A&R website. Maybe their web-monkeys haven’t caught up yet.
I am just wondering about Borders e-books – how long will they work for? Does their e-reader phone home to ensure activation?
Piracy
http://xkcd.com/488/
We are lucky here in Central QLD we have two book stores K mart and Big W, personally I can’t see the attraction of Book Depository.
Books shmooks. Just go and see the movie.
I might just have to open a book store so I’ll never run out of *new book* smell.
In case anyone interested:
http://bobcarrblog.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/2230/
BTW–Amazon UK are giving free delivery to Oz/ NZ customers for orders over 25 pounds. I shouldn’t say that; Amazon is my natural enemy but others will like it.
Bill,
The ANZACs by Adam-Smith is reprinting. I imagine that is why you could not find it on the shelves at Christmas time.
Sometimes what seems like a glaring oversight on the part of the booksellers (i.e. not having extensive backlist) is just the smallness of the industry and books tend to fall out of print rather often.
Boo fkn hoo for the book chains. I’ve got as much sympathy for them as I would if Coleworths or Gloriabucks were to go broke. Borders and A&R never lost any sleep over the number of indy bookshops they put to death. The model was never going to work out in this small market. I’m only surprised it took this long.
Berkelouw Books – excellent fast service and for orders over $50, free post! Even the stuff they source from OS! I don’t know how they do it, but it works out cheaper than using Amazon. Gleebooks is pretty good online too.
Berkelouw and Gleebooks are guns, brilliant places. Christ I hope they never go broke.
I like to buy locally, but as I have little income while I study, I simply can’t resist the prices from the Book Depository. I also once received one of my orders just 48 hours after I posted it (and the rest, rarely more than 2 weeks). I still visit bookstores, but they tend to be of the second-hand variety (and the Lifeline Bookfest is simply bliss – all those books and money to charity too!)
So personally, even without an e-reader, the big book chains haven’t had any of my money for years. I still buy the occasional book, but mainly from speciality stores like Pulp Fiction or Comics Etc. I hope the speciality stores stick around – nothing like a good browse of a wall full of book covers, searching out that hidden gem.
*’still buy the occassional book from a physical bookstore” that was meant to read.
I buy far more than the ‘occassional’ book (packed shelves are staring at me right now reminding me of that)
Why the Amazon hate? The only thing I don’t like about it is that not all sellers post to here.
My favourite bookstore is Abe’s Books. They have an Australian on-line site as well as an American one, they do second hand as well as new, they’re cheap, and they have rare and weird stuff, as well as best sellers and textbooks. http://www.abebooks.com/books/ANZ/
Independent booksellers make reading a bit of a secret club – you had to develop special knowledge to find the interesting works – Amazon and chains remove that. The argument for independents (that they stock stuff you can’t get elsewhere) goes out the window when you can get anything and everything through Amazon. No more pandering to Bartholomew to get him to order in a copy of something that is getting a limited print run that he heard about – just go online and find it yourself.
As I mentioned earlier, you can get the same (if not better) book buying advice through social media.
Another reason for the disdain of chains is that they stock according to rigorous rules of popularity rather than the personal tastes of the owner (Amazon stocks everything, so this doesn’t apply) – which means that the bookstores lack “character”. We all know of brilliant authors who aren’t popular and there is a supposition that if only there were more independent bookstores, these brilliant authors would be more likely to see the light of day.
Rather than focusing on the retail end of the book industry I think it’s more appropriate to look at the industry as a whole when considering it’s future. There are lessons to be learned from the music industry in it’s struggle to adapt to a new world order and new technology. The music industry (except perhaps iTunes) is still struggling to maintain its traditional model despite the public’s enthusiastic acceptance of digital media.
The book industry can learn a lot from this. Traditional publishing methods have been rendered obsolete by technology and they need to adapt to this. The music industry has largely failed to successfully embrace digital technology and develop a successful commercial model. The book industry needs to avoid making the same mistakes and needs to look seriously at new digital technology. Ebooks aren’t the only game in town. Digital POD (Print On Demand) technology has huge implications and potential benefits for the book industry as a whole, including authors, publishers and retailers.
With POD, publishers don’t have the financial risks associated with huge print runs of books that may not sell – which should make it easier for authors, particularly new authors to be published. The role of publishers would shift to licensing more than production.
Retailers would have to invest in the POD technology instead of maintaining inventory, but this may not cost more than inventory, especially as the costs of the technology come down.
The biggest problem I see is the actual implementation at the point of sale but surely this isn’t insurmountable. Perhaps it’s as simple as having one copy of the mainstream books available to pick up and read through, ordering the book at the checkout, and having a coffee while waiting for it to be printed. Every retailer could maintain a huge backlists, ready for print on demand.
DavidFM,
If they could make that work it’d be truly fantastic I reckon.
If we can use 100% recycled paper to do this it ought to greatly reduce the environmental impact. But people don’t seem keen on recycled paper, still. I also don’t know if the technique works with that kind of paper.
But yeah, if they could retain bookshops, your idea is great.
+++Retailers would have to invest in the POD technology instead of maintaining inventory, but this may not cost more than inventory, especially as the costs of the technology come down.+++
I keep hearing talk about the so-called “Espresso Book Machine”. It’s a super-compact printing and binding device which takes a PDF file of the book and prints, binds and covers a copy for you on the spot. The process is supposed to take about the same time it would take to order and drink a cup of coffee, hence the name.
If/when these become viable they’d change retail bookselling significantly by reducing or eliminating warehousing and shipping. (Those are major considerations for Australian retailers given the distances involved here.)
Wikipedia page is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espresso_Book_Machine (Heh, it says Angus and Robertson had one but shut it down.)
Company ad here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q946sfGLxm4 I’m not sure I *quite* buy that its output is completely indistinguishable from a book off a full commercial press, but I’m prepared to believe that it could get there within a couple more iterations of the tech.
I can imagine bookshops looking even more like cafes if this catches on, since the main requirement is somewhere to wait and something to do while this thing is chugging out your book. The stock on the shelves would be there to provide hardbacks and any special formats the machine might have trouble doing, plus a small pool of browsables or popular books that people mightn’t want to wait for.
I dig Abe’s Books the most. And his sausages are the awesome. The former are better than the latter by mail order though.
Those that asked, it’s Martin Smith’s bookshop that I think is closing – the one at the beach end of Hall St. – oh a quick look on google shows that they are also using the name Zabriskie’s. Gertrude and Alice seems to be staying put at the moment. I love a little shop like that, enough quirky or interesting books to enjoy a good browse (and perhaps purchase) but not so big that you get lost or overwhelmed by choice. And the staff actually know what’s in the shop.
Mathew, from memory a store in Melbourne had that and it wasn’t a success.
Bangar–is that so? Interesting.
Maybe it just needs the critical mass element , change them mindset.
Bookshop/cafes are getting up now. In NZ a library had its own cafe. Sydney has a few great ones–Sapphos in Glebe for example. Does great trade.
I went to Borders on Saturday and saw the very small A4 poster put up in a rather inconvenient place in the store telling gift card holders that they had two options:
1: They could apply to the creditors for ‘money’ owed to them; or
2: In a ‘goodwill’ gesture, we could cash our vouchers in if we spent the same amount in the store.
I decided to do the latter and went to the counter with $102 worth of overpriced books. There was very little on sale. In fact, there was nothing on sale and I really enjoyed spending $28 on a novel. When I put my voucher on the counter the lip pierced girl with the monster fringe meekly told me about the voucher business. I said I knew about that and put on my best ‘cats bum’ face. She then asked if I wanted a bag for my books and when I replied in the affirmative she said they would charge me 10c for a bag.
I thought about bludgeoning her to death with a meaty Dan Brown tome but decided that this was no way for an ordinary human to die.
So yeah, I got butt-raped by the system. It was either that or waiting months for a letter saying I would get no money.
Nah, the POD stuff is kinda rubbish quality. Fine if you don’t want anything better than a pulpy novel that will fall apart while or just after you read it, but not something that you’ll be able to keep on your shelves.
It is the old equation [CHEAP][FAST][GOOD](Pick only two)
I too am sorry to see Borders go. I have spent hours in their stores both in Qld and NSW over the years and found their general reference and special interest sections first class – much better than anything in my local indy bookstores.